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17 thoughts on “Happy May Day”

Talking about victims of tyrannical governments, what do you make of Mr. Netanyahu’s big reveal about Iran’s nuclear program?

What would a nation state “do” with “only” a handful of 10 kT atomic weapons anyway? Yes, they could be used for blackmail or terror, but if you used what are nuclear pea-shooters in anger, one of the Nuclear Great Powers would rain boosted and two-staged weapons of much greater power and much greater numbers on your head.

Also, what was Iran doing casting uranium into hemispheres? If they are making an implosion weapon, why are/supposedly were they bothering with industrial-scale uranium enrichment?

And what was the Big Explosion in Damascus all about and why is nobody talking about it?

And why is the news coverage dominated by, cough, “hemispheres” not made of fissionable material?

what do you make of Mr. Netanyahu’s big reveal about Iran’s nuclear program?

Of course, Bibi and Israel would make the claim. This is like getting from WikiLeaks evidence of DNC collusion with CNN to rig the primary for Hillary. Everyone has seen the evidence, the authenticity of the evidence in bona fide, but the story will be about who released the evidence and the manner in which they received it. It won’t be about the corruption the evidence shows, because that’s a story the media and progressives don’t want to tell.

But you can build implosion bombs from uranium, can’t you? From what I remember, the problem is that you can’t build a gun bomb from plutonium, because it naturally produces too many neutrons. So plutonium has to use an implosion design.

And I’d guess that, if you’re planning to weaponize them, uranium gun bombs are just too darn big if you don’t have a B-29 handy to drop it.

Hollow-sphere implosion devices can be made out of enriched uranium, yes. And it was a plutonium isotope issue that caused “Thin Man” to be shelved; as you said, the mix coming out of the pile was too “hot”, and would have messed with the safeties, the fuses, and even the HE itself.

The implosion design has certain advantages that have made gun-types irrelevant:

1) It uses less fuel than a gun-type
2) It uses almost all of the same technology as a plutonium bomb, which gives you all the practice you need for making those when sufficient fuel becomes available

But if you have the explosives know-how to do implosion, what is the deal with all of the uranium enrichment centrifuges drawing so much attention. If you can “do” implosion, you can breed plutonium by sneaking some U-238 rods in and out of a reactor on the Q-T? Or is the uranium stockpile a “backstop” if their implosion design doesn’t work?

‘sconsin went on a Total Quality Management and Customer Service “kick” some while ago, and the service at our local DMV is really, really good.

The worker taking the driver’s license photos had a profound disability involving his hands — I didn’t ask whether he was a wounded veteran or had some other condition but my take on a worker doing his job is that it really wasn’t my business to know.

You know the trope about your license picture looking like a booking mug shot, and there are rules that you are not supposed to smile for your passport photo because security reasons of requiring a “normal” photo. But the man at DMV takes really good pictures, one that I am happy with.

So I have to hand it Wisconsin DMV that they take customer service seriously, and they also take opportunity-in-employment seriously and hired this man who you would think would have a hard time even just handing you your new driver’s license, but this worker takes a great picture.

So yes, I had been to the DMV in Broward County when I purchased a car from a family member in Florida and needed to get the necessary temporary papers to drive it home, and that “shop” was as DMV-ee as they get, but I want to give a shout out to the license picture taker in Wisconsin who takes pride in this work.